


the way you hold your gun (they can't take that away from me)

by hideyseek



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Non-Graphic Violence, purple prose like woah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:48:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27072985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hideyseek/pseuds/hideyseek
Summary: You’d thought he was bulletproof, once upon a time.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32





	the way you hold your gun (they can't take that away from me)

**Author's Note:**

> title adapted from the lyrics of "they can't take that away from me" by ella fitzgerald 
> 
> this was written in a bit of a rush, though edited in less of a rush. mostly i wanted to push a bunch of extended motifs and overt metaphors into the vague shape of a plot. enjoy!

You’d thought he was bulletproof, once upon a time. 

Arthur with those dangerous eyes: dark in the dark. Those suits that he’d peel off on a hot day, layer by layer by layer by layer until he was in just an undershirt with his shoulders glistening with sweat. You’d loved him slowly and all at once, a car accident on a roundabout. 

He hadn’t shot you when you met, though you like to tell people that. It’s always more interesting to lie — if they find out you’re lying and you tell them something new, they either get complacent or they get irritable. One is useful, and one is  _ fun _ . 

“My father owns a dukedom in England but I won’t tell you which one,” you’d said to him, when you spotted him bent over a desk in those slate-grey slacks of his, sleeves rolled pearl-white to just above the point of his elbows. His mouth was stern and his eyes went sterner, when he looked up and saw that the person who’d walked into the warehouse was you. 

“Mr. Eames,” he’d said to you that day, voice mild and nothing like later. Later, you press him into the sheets of your hotel bed with a cold palm splayed against the hot curve of his back. He arches and pants into your linen pillowcase and your knuckles go pale as a fist when you haul him toward you by the crease of his hips. It doesn’t happen again.

Later, you leave in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of a job to catch a flight home to your mother’s hospital bed.  _ family business _ , you’ll text Arthur afterward.  _ sorry, love _ . He’ll try to freeze you out of the business, but too many people have wanted to fuck you since you conned them into wanting it for that to ever work the way he wants. 

And of course, beautiful bulletproof Arthur is ever the exception. You catch him by the wrist and he pulls away. You catch him by the elbow, you slide your hand against the small of his back, you clasp his shoulder warm through the thin crumpling cloth of his dress shirt and he pulls away from you. 

You stand and watch him from a distance in a dream and he comes to you in the middle of a job that doesn’t matter, eyes dark and his hands sending his gun clattering onto the sidewalk you’re both standing on. 

The sunlight takes slices out of his face, dream-yellow and harsh until all you can see of him is hard jaw, dark eyes, the sharp line of his nose, nothing, then — the shock of his mint-cold mouth on yours. You stumble back and he crowds you into the side of a building, holds you there with his fingertips on your chest and his hand on your cheek until the warmth of the sun-heated stone smooths you out and you kiss him back the way he wants you to. 

So it’s familiar, when he shoves you back against a doorway in a dream six jobs later and your breath bursts out of you like a shout. You hear five shots go off and you hear four hit the side of the building. In the millisecond of silence when your mind expects the fifth, Arthur grunts quietly and collapses softly against you. 

You’re touching him again, rough, hands catching him under his arms, hauling him close. He’s helping, shoes scrabbling gracelessly against the sidewalk, breath hot and damp against the pulse point of your neck. Everything feels slow except the way Arthur’s breathing.

“My father doesn’t own a dukedom,” you say into his shoulder. “My mother really was in hospital.” When you can bear to look at his face again, his eyes are fixed on yours with an intensity you’ve never seen, eyes paled in the sunlight. 

_ This wasn’t supposed to happen, _ you think, but the thought is just thunder after lightning, too slow to be anything but an indication of where the storm is headed.

His fingers tangle blood-tacky in yours and you track the slow seep of warmth from your hand to his until the kick reaches you both. He doesn’t look away, but neither do you.

**Author's Note:**

> if you want to say hello, i'm on tumblr @hideyseek!


End file.
